THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, August 24, 1994 TAG: 9408240484
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DAVE MAYFIELD
DATELINE: NEWPORT NEWS LENGTH: Long : 117 lines
The information highway is one part of America that promises to be truly colorblind.
That's what Jimmy J. Davies believes. He's trying to help other African-Americans believe it too.
Davies' company, MacMasters Computer Training Service, recently signed a contract with Apple Computer Inc. to establish a national electronic bulletin-board service on Apple's fledgling eWorld on-line network.
Beginning Oct. 1, if all goes as planned, subscribers to eWorld will be able to tap into something that Davies is calling the African American Information Network.
Davies says the bulletin board will provide information of interest to black people on everything from education to politics to entertainment. He claims it will be the first national electronic bulletin board devoted exclusively to African-American issues.
In today's rapidly changing on-line computer world, claims of ``first'' or ``biggest'' are tough to prove. There are already dozens of local and regional bulletin boards that cater to blacks, says Kathryn McCabe, editor-in-chief of Online Access magazine. And, she points out, there are African-American mailing lists and discussion groups on the Internet, the global web of computer networks.
Nevertheless, Davies is an electronic frontiersman. He says he's hoping that his new bulletin board will help foster more successes among blacks on the information highway.
He's already evidence, he believes, that one's race is becoming ever more inconsequential along that highway.
Six years ago, Davies closed down his janitorial business and started the Newport News-based MacMasters. He was entering what was then almost exclusively a white person's world. But he quickly built a solid niche helping businesses and government agencies train their workers to use Apple's Macintosh computers.
Today MacMasters has customers in eight states from West Virginia to Georgia. And the 40-year-old Davies isn't just active in his industry. He's on top of it - the founder and president of a 125-member national association of Macintosh trainers.
His business, which has customers ranging from the Army to Du Pont Co., is neither helped nor hindered by the fact that he is black, Davies says. ``The bottom line,'' he says, ``is you have to provide a good service at a reasonable cost and take care of your customers.''
Likewise he has noticed as a participant in or observer of computer on-line exchanges that characteristics like race, age or sex seem to matter less than in the non-electronic world.
``When you talk to people over the network, you can't see how old they are or what color they are,'' he says. ``The only thing you have to go on is the person's intelligence. So what's happening is that people are forming friendships or other relationships that they otherwise wouldn't.''
Davies says the toughest going for blacks and other minorities on the information highway is getting on the entrance ramp. Because they generally have less access to computer training and technology in schools, they're often a step or more behind their white counterparts entering the world of work.
Davies says he also is concerned that the information-highway building plans of some phone and cable companies are bypassing inner cities, which are populated by a disproportionately high number of minorities.
Once he got on the highway, there has been little to slow down Davies.
The Michigan native moved to Newport News in 1984 after earning a bachelor's degree in math from Ferris State University. The janitorial business he started soon after arriving on the Peninsula was doing modestly well. But Davies wanted more.
One summer day in 1987, a friend who worked for a computer store invited him to visit. Davies started tinkering with a Macintosh in the store and quickly grew fascinated with it. One thing led to another. Within a year, MacMasters was born.
Today, Davies has two other full-time employees and about a dozen computer trainers throughout the Southeast who work under contract. The company will pull in revenues of about $250,000 this year, he says.
He's hoping the new bulletin-board service will generate far more business - but he has no idea how much. MacMasters will be paid royalties by Apple based on how much the service is used. And there will be plenty of competition for the eWorld subscribers' time. Apple, which launched the eWorld service in June after a six-month trial, already has signed up more than 100 other ``content providers'' for its network, including Reuters America Inc., Tribune Media Services and Inc. magazine.
Apple charges eWorld subscribers $8.95 a month for up to two hours' use of the network. Each additional hour costs $4.95. While the network is available only to Macintosh users, its universe of potential users will grow dramatically early next year when owners of IBM-compatible computers with Microsoft Windows software are allowed to tie in, says Frank O'Mahony, an Apple spokesman.
It's not clear how many subscribers eWorld has. O'Mahony says only that it is much smaller than Prodigy and CompuServe, the largest of the national proprietary on-line services with millions of paying customers.
Davies, however, believes he's getting in on the ground floor of something that will grow very big.
He's not alone. McCabe, of Online Access, says she attended a national trade show in Atlanta last week just for bulletin-board services. ``There were a couple of thousand people there who want to make their living this way,'' she says.
Those like Davies who have focused their services on sizable niches that appear to be underserved have the best chances to succeed, McCabe says.
Davies, who estimates he will have spent $5,000 to launch the African American Information Network, is riffling through the black community looking for data and images to present on the bulletin-board service. By Oct. 1, he hopes to have gained ongoing support from colleges, community groups, churches, newspaper and magazine publishers, fraternities and sororities, sports and entertainment figures, and politicians.
``We have a lot of work to do,'' he says. ILLUSTRATION: Color staff photo by Motoya Nakamura
Jimmy J. Davies, president of MacMasters Computer Training Service,
is planning a new venture - the African American Information Network
- with Apple Computer Co. Shown with Davis is Karen Robinson.
by CNB